{"id":23610,"date":"2025-02-10T01:24:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T08:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-sends-seven-wrestlers-to-represent-panthers-at-state\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:39:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:39:37","slug":"montezuma-cortez-sends-seven-wrestlers-to-represent-panthers-at-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-sends-seven-wrestlers-to-represent-panthers-at-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez sends seven wrestlers to represent Panthers at state"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Panthers
Panthers senior Ashton Orr attempts to roll over Ignacio's Dillon Brann by pulling his arm at the McGee Park Coliseum on Saturday. (Kaitlyn Lowley\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Montezuma-Cortez wrestling program will be represented at the state championships Ball Arena this weekend after competing in their regional tournaments Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n

The boys team competed in the Class 3A Region 3 tournament at Grand Valley High School in Parachute and the girls took part in the 4A Girls Region 2 tournament at Gunnison High School.<\/p>\n

M-CHS experienced changes this season, with a record turnout at tryouts and many underclassmen joining the wrestling team. A girls team was also introduced, adding to the excitement of the year.<\/p>\n

\"Panthers
Panthers freshman CeJae Snyder, shown in the Clash at the Coliseum last month, placed first in the 115-pound division in the Intermountain regionals this weekend. (Kaitlyn Lowley\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Representing the girls in their first year at state are freshman Paislee Mestas (120 pounds), senior Aubrey Rutherford (145), and freshman CeJae Snyder, who took first place in the 115-pound division at regionals in Gunnison.<\/p>\n

Mestas lost her first matchup in the quarterfinals by pin fall before winning the Round 3 consolation match against Cassandra Linhardt of Mullen by a pin at 1:22. She advanced into the fourth-place match, where she earned her spot at state by pinning Bayfield\u2019s Audrina Velasquez in the 120-pound bracket.<\/p>\n

Rutherford went on an nearly perfect streak, reaching the championship match against Roselynne Bernal-Rodriguez from Basalt High School. She had to concede due to an injury, but will make her first appearance at state.<\/p>\n

CeJae Snyder, who comes with a lot of experience prior to her high school year, defeated Nevaeh Cortez of Olathe to compete in the 115-pound championship round against West Grand\u2019s Sage Wheatly where she won by pin fall at the 3:05 mark.<\/p>\n

Senior Ashton Orr leads boys team<\/div>\n

From the boys side, the Panthers are led by juniors Bodie Stiegelmeyer (113) and Rusty Snyder (138), sophomore Keaton Curleyhair (120) and senior Ashton Orr (144).<\/p>\n

Stiegelmeyer had a 2-0 streak in the tournament before losing in the semifinals to Damyon Funk of Gunnison but posted a couple more victories to be the third-place match against Delta\u2019s Cha Pla where he lost by a 15-0 technical fall, but he earned the right to return to state.<\/p>\n

Rusty Snyder followed a similar path, losing to Zach Benson of Gunnison in the semifinals. However, he then won two consecutive matches, including a 11-2 major decision victory over Aiden Knecht of Centauri in the third-place match, securing his spot at state in the 138-pound bracket.<\/p>\n

The semifinal round continued to challenge the Panthers as Curleyhair lost by a 12-6 decision to Bayfield\u2019s Connor Martindale before winning a consolation match to face Grand Valley\u2019s Carmine Neil and won by a 9-8 decision to place third overall in the 120-pound division.<\/p>\n

As a senior, this is Orr\u2019s first year wrestling, but he leveraged his jiu-jitsu background to advance to state. He lost in the semifinals to Colton Lucero of Pagosa Springs but battled his way into the third-place match in the 144-pound bracket. Orr fell short in the match, losing 10-4 to Niklas Skadberg of Centauri.<\/p>\n

State action will start on Thursday, Feb. 13 and go throughout the weekend at the Ball Arena in Denver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

places first, Bodie Stiegelmeyer returns to state<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,2587,36,29,1205],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-high-school-wrestling","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-wrestling"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78196,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23610\/revisions\/78196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23610"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}